Preferences
by Reine-de-Coeurs
Summary: They all had their preferences. Mrs Lovett's POV.


**Credit obviously to Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.**

I've got a bit of a fondness for gin, I have. Most like, ever so much more than I ought to have. Gin or tea, or some-times the both together. You wouldn't think they'd mix too well at all, would you, now, but I tell you, dearie, it's the queerest thing, and it turns out they _does_.

I suppose that's some-thing I stumbled on in me married days. Poor, dear Albert; every time he'd see me drinking any-thing strong, he'd chalk it up to troubles. And troubles I had, I know I did; we both did. The times wasn't always too kind, even then. Well, perhaps the times was lovely up-stairs, but for us, not so much. Still, I didn't want to worry him, did I, now? – Albert, that is; the one as would be doing his worrying for _me_. So, I'd make me up a cup of tea, and in the gin would go. You couldn't see a thing, and Albert certainly didn't have the keenest sense of smell that ever was.

He was more of an ale-drinking man, he was. Silly thing; trust him to take a fancy to any-thing as wasn't going to do him the least bleeding bit of good. There's no bit of unhealth as I'll wager a good four swigs of gin couldn't burn away; where-as, beer just keeps it all muddled, if you has a lot, and can't be good at all. That's what I think, and that's what I've been told, too. The doctor used to come in for supper, he did, all the time, and that's what he'd tell me. Well, some-thing like that; it _was_ ever such a long time ago.

'There, now, dear,' I'd brush off me hands and say to Albert, 'you hear that?' But he'd just smile up and say that between the two of us, I was the one as would be the most like to be seeing a doctor; and then he'd ask me if I wouldn't top him up on the ale. Silly thing; never listened, that one didn't. Perhaps if he'd have listened the odd bit more than he did, he'd have lived to see this morning.

But then, he'd be getting a bit on towards old, wouldn't he, by now? He'd be fifty-six this year; and me, well, I'm still younger than he was when he married me. For another two year, at least. I suppose it was all for the best. I did care for him, silly thing he was; and I certainly wouldn't want that he should be seeing me like _this_.

Mr Todd, well, he's particularly fond of whiskey. He has a mug of hot whiskey in the mornings, in stead of tea or coffee. Mercy, but how peculiar a man he is. I've never liked whiskey meself, but I think it tastes lovely on him. He don't never drink enough whiskey to smell of it – well, whiskey's not cheap – but it seems like he always tastes like it. In a faint way, like a spice peppered ever so careful. Got the subtlest taste in the world, that one has. He can do you the worst kind of insult or injury, and still it sounds like a song on _his_ lips.

He'll give me some money to buy the whiskey; he knows pretty well I couldn't sensibly pay for it. The shop-keepers give me such a time for that, when they feels particularly playful. 'Awful good drink, that one is,' they'll tell me.

'Well, _nothing's_ too good for Mr Todd.' Slip of the tongue, really, is all it is most times. They'll look up at me, and me tongue will go cold in me mouth for a moment. 'I'm … running errands for him,' I'll say once I've got the breath back. 'He's busy with shop.' When really, he could go out any-time he likes. But, well, I've took a bit of a fancy to doing his shopping, and he lets me.

'Oh; well,' will say the shop-hands, 'kind neighbour you are, missus.'

'Thank you, sir.' Some-times I think they've got to know, they have, all about the way we carry on, but I don't trouble to find out for sure. Well, at least I can be sure they don't know about the business. So I leave with the whiskey for Mr Todd, and the gin for me, and I try not to worry too much. If there's any coins left over, I'll go and buy him some flowers, or some-thing like that. He don't mind flowers, does Mr Todd. Poppies are his favourites.

We don't open the shops on Sundays. Not because we're particularly religious – which we're not, let me put to you – but rather because every-body else seems to be. There's no custom at all to be had on Sundays (hear me, I've tried), so we doesn't bother. That besides, the day off is ever so nice.

The Sunday mornings is always lovely, at least to me. I wake up when the sun rises and go up-stairs to him. And he's up already; he's been up for hours; he's always loved the mornings. I say hello, and he returns it, and then we spend for a while, in the chair or some-times on the wall. And when we've finished, well, that depends all on him. Some-times, you see, he'll work his self up to one of them bad humours after, and brood away the whole afternoon, hating his self, I know hating me. Poor man; likely he's the most charming shattered man you'll ever meet.

When his humour's better, I ask him to come on down-stairs, and some-times he will. That's what I like the best, when we stand round the empty shop all the day long until supper. Him reading the paper, and me reading his face. Him with the mug of whiskey, and me with the glass of gin.

He don't like gin. It's good for binging, he says, but he's a slow drinker any-how. The only time that Mr Todd ever goes binging in the gin is every November the sodding sixteenth – Mr Barker's wedding anniversary.

When he does that, there's little moments where I think I can still see Mr Barker in him. You wouldn't think it at all, would you, but the truth is that Mr T. turns out to be a bit of a merry drunk. Well, a bit merry for him, any-how, at least. Gets awful chatty, that one does, when he's got off his head with gin. He'll say hello when I come in to a room, which don't happen too usual; or he'll laugh at things. And it's only when he's awful, powerful liquored up that he talks to me of love. What beautiful words he says to me, when he don't know what he's saying. I laugh and shake me head at him, mostly 'cause I know I'm the only one of us two as will still remember this in the morning. Silly thing; I want to laugh at him and help him all at the same time.

That will be on November the sixteenth, and on the seventeenth, of course, he'll be struck all day with the most powerful head-ache. I hear the odd groan from up-stairs, but I don't dare even ask if he'd like some coffee to calm it.

I know perfectly well, I do, you see, what the reason is that he don't touch coffee any-more. I never asked him, mind you well; and, yea, I might pretend for his sake that I _don't_ know, but I know. It's because coffee was the thing what _she_ liked to drink; his dear, precious Mrs Barker. She's got a first name, of course she has, but I've only said it once. And that time, how false it sounded on me lips! So, never again.

I remember ever so clear, though; Mrs Barker and her coffee. For a woman who didn't never take too kind to me, she certainly spent a peculiar lot of her time sitting round me shop. When the sun was shining, she used to sit at the table by the window, stirring her coffee for ages. She took it black and sugared up. Without a word, I watched her stir the coffee. She had such lovely, willowy hands; perfect hands, lady's hands. The sun would hit her face; and, cor, she was ever so beautiful, she really was. If only she wasn't so cold.

Some-times I'll concede to wondering if she hadn't started going mad already, long before the poison or the Judge. I don't think I've ever been mad, mind, but I'd imagine it'd creep up on you, it would. It'd be little private moments, all over years, until one day you'd find yourself in the apothecary's without a by-your-leave. You'd find yourself drinking half a bottle of arsenic and splashing the other half on the walls, for me to spend six month trying to clean.

I wondered, I did, that afternoon in the middle of May, what in bleeding Hell was going on up-stairs. I could hear Johanna screaming (just a year-old baby, she was then); and above that, I could hear, too, that Mrs Barker was laughing. It was a hard, wild sound, where before her laugh had been like soft bells. All at once, the laughing stopped, and there was a thump, and Johanna was still crying; so I come up to see what it was. I opened up the door, and the arsenic on the walls hit me in the eyes, straight burning. Once I'd got me bearings back, I could see Mrs Barker sprawled on the floor of Mr Barker's old shop, the bottle rolled across the room, and Johanna lying in her crib, screaming the day away.

A lot of times, when Mrs Barker didn't _seem_ mad just yet, she would come in to the shop, sit by the window, and order her sugared black coffee. She'd have a pen and paper with her, and take it out with a smile on her face. 'You don't mind, Mrs Lovett, do you?' she'd turn her face up and ask in a smooth, perfected voice. 'I have letters to write, and the light is better here.'

The light was plainly not better. I had three tiny half-curtained windows in the shop, and up-stairs they had a big lovely bay window which he gladly would have put at her disposal. But I had to give her a smile and put on a cheery air. 'No, Mrs Barker dear, of course I wouldn't mind.'

I suppose you'd hardly think it of her now, but Mrs Barker was very well brought-up. She could speak French; she could play a harp. She could write page after page in her flowery, elegant hand; and she could read easily, in twenty minute, what would take me an hour to stumble through.

There's really only one impressive thing I can do, and that's music. I can read notes, so as I can play the harmonium, but the thing is, I like to sing and I've got the voice for it. I had this dream, when I was too young to understand things, about singing in music halls, or some-thing silly like that. I like to think maybe I could have, if I'd had a different life, but I'd _not_. By the time I was nine, I'd got far too sensible for dreams like that. Some-times I still sing in the shop, or play after closing-time.

Mrs Barker, before she went _too_ mad, could play pretty as you please on a harp, but that was damn near the only thing she _could_ play. She was actually pretty choppy at the harmonium, and she couldn't sing a note to save her skin. I never could decide if it was better, knowing there was a thing I could do what she couldn't; or if it was worse, knowing it wouldn't never matter at all to him. Still, Mrs Barker's beautiful harp was the first of the things I hocked when the times got awful bad. Thirty-two shilling and sixpence halfpenny. Got me by for quite a time, that did.

There was a bit, there, I had to depend all on things like that. When the times gets bad enough that all as you can afford to buy is rancid meat, you're sure to make a bundle more on hocking things than you ever does on business. Which is what I did. And even then, the times wasn't too kind; well, _kind _they never had been, but they was cruel now.

I used to eat thrice a week: on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings. Some days it wasn't so bad, but, well, some days I'd get hungrier than the others. On them days, I'd burn off the hunger with gin. That's the thing with gin: when you has enough, just enough, you're like to forget all about being hungry.

A peculiar lot of times, even though it was bad when there wasn't custom, I got to thinking it had to be as bad when there _was_, just in another way. There'd be some sort of well-off business-man sitting in the shop, with his rosy wife and healthy kids. And there'd be me: shivering and maybe sick, throat-bones sticking out, blazing drunk and making them pies while I talked away to try and cover the sound of me guts squealing like piglets. But, well, I always did keep meself three step out the poor-house; which was what counted, really. I wasn't _too_ bad-off, considering.

And then, straight along come Mr Todd, and I'm not bad-off at all any-more. Well, the way I see it is rather like this: we all does things we've got to put out our minds; we all does the worst things for the best reasons. Some of us the odd bit worse than others; that's all. It'll be all right one day, I know, if I can just wait a while. And I can wait, of course; I could do any-thing for him, and I do.

Only, now, we've got this little boy what come to us, poor thing. And what a sweet, peculiar child he is. Well, I suppose it _would_ be a peculiar sort of child what might sweep the way of me and Mr Todd. We're quite the odd bit peculiar ourselves.

I just couldn't allow for nothing bad to fall on him, you see. Mind you, I'd only just met him then. I didn't know all too much about him, but then, I didn't really need to. He was the sweetest little thing, and he had bandages all over his hands, and you could see the cheek-bones in his sallow face what didn't never have a smile off it. I always liked him, right from the first words we give each other, and I could help him if I had half the mind for it. Which I did.

So, I told a little tiny half-lie to Mr T., that I'd been thinking of hiring some lad for the shop. I hadn't, but I was bleeding well thinking it now. And I told the lad – Toby, his name is – that I had a very nice sofa in the parlour he could have, and as many blankets as he liked. He said one blanket would be just fine for him, but I put another two on when he was asleep that first night, and he told me 'thank you' in the morning.

He stays with me in the day-time, when the shop's open, and always asks if he can't do nothing to help me. I tell him 'no' most times; 'cause I can manage pretty well, I can, and I'd rather have the company. I let him work in the supper rush; that I can't manage so well on me own. Other-wise, though, it's me as should be doing most of the working. I know pretty well he got his childhood took from him early, like we all did, but I'm thinking, if I can just bring a little bit of it back round … well, that'll be one good thing.

I'm kind to him, like is just me way with people, and I've got to say he does take it rather well. Mr Todd, bless his poor shattered heart, don't take half so well to kindness, but that don't mean nothing, only that I've got to try harder with him than I have to with Toby. I think of it rather like Mr Todd's a window with slippery curtains on, and it's all up to me to figure out how to get hold of them; 'cause once you can get hold of a curtain, you can pull it back any time you like, but not before.

Well, if Mr Todd's a window shut, barred, and locked, with all them slippery blasted curtains tossed over, then Toby's certainly more like a window all the way opened in the day-lit street, with sun-light just streaming in all the day long. Such an agreeable boy, that one is; silly thing. I'd say, I would, that they're both quite silly, just in their own particular ways. Such a shame it is that they don't get on better, too; 'cause I've got to right love the both of them, I have by now.

Toby isn't but nine years old (hardly past eight when first I met him), and already he's got the same bad way of a fondness for gin I have. Though to tell the truth, I suppose it was Mr Todd was discovered that, and not me at all. The day the Italian got his self done in, the lad (not that he knew a thing about it, mind, bless his eyes) come running down the stairs, told me that Mr Todd said he was to have a tot of gin. 'Oh! –' I said, half-surprised while I got meself up. 'Well, if Mr Todd says so, dear.'

I remember standing up in the shop that day – Mr Todd's shop, that is – with the trunks' lid flipped up, and the smell all over. I told him I'd never seen so much blood, and he didn't say nothing except for: 'Mm ….' Great lot of good that did, too; silly thing.

Any-how, well, I was standing there that day, and while I did, at first I got to feeling a bit sorry for the Italian, stuffed in the trunk like he was. Right asking for it, he was, but even so. I guess I figured, as Mr Todd hasn't really got too much of a sense for remorse, perhaps I ought to have some for him. I figured so, that is, until that night, when I was smearing ointment in all the lad's cuts and bruises. 'Cor, lad,' I kept saying to him, and shaking me head back and forth, and then I decided likely as not the Italian had got precisely what he'd had coming to him; and that was that.

Well, by now I suppose you could say I've got to spend a powerful lot of time with the boy, what bits of me time I don't spend with Mr Todd. In the evenings, some-times, when he's in a particular bit of an acquiescing humour, he'll let me come and work on his hands after closing-time. Mercy, but I can't even tell you what kind of look he give me when I first tried it. I come into the parlour and sat by him on the sofa. 'Here –' I said, and reached over 'cross me lap to him, 'lad, give me your hands.'

Such a strange look he give me then, as though I'd just done the queerest thing in God's green earth. 'What for?' he said, and then caught his self. 'If you please, mum.'

''Course I do, silly thing,' I told him, and let go his hand. 'It's only – well, a nice boy like you _should_ have his self a nice pair of hands.'

He give me back his hand then, and said to me: 'Thank you, missus, you're a right good lady.' He flushed when I worked on his fingers like no-one ever give him a kind word, even, till just now.

That was the way of things just at first, in them days when his hands was still cut up awful. And to think, he didn't never even flinch when I give him the hand-presses. I wondered all the time why that was, but I didn't never ask. Well, by now, any-how, he's more got used to me ways with people. I've got a sweet and a gentle heart, I have, not that it do me much good, mind. Still, it's there, i'n't it, like it always was; and I like to think it do a bit of good to some-one else, some-times. Such as, I'll give a pie and ale to any blind beggar as comes wandering in, apart from mad old Mrs Barker. God in Heaven knows, I done enough for her already.

Still, there's always Toby. I like him; such a sweet lad he is, and mercy knows, he's the only thing I got what I know I'm doing right by. I'm kind, I know I am, but not very good. So much wrong I do all the time, much might it be for just the right reasons. Still, it's nice to have one thing I'm doing proper right, to give him the best I can, and to fool meself that I'm still what I used to be, even just a bit.

In the late mornings, some-times, I'll let him drink the coffee what I always kept in the cupboards. I haven't even got a faint idea _why_ I kept it, after all them years: Mr Todd don't drink it, and neither do I. Albert used to drink it, peace rest his dear heart, and so did Mrs Barker; but where I'm concerned, they've the both of them passed on. So, there sat the coffee in me cupboards, with no one drinking it for years, but the boy drinks it now; he likes it.

I stand at the counter in the mornings, pouring him coffee what older than he is, most like, but I might wager that he don't know the difference, dear thing he is. 'Can't come a bit of harm with a little nip of gin in that, can there?' I ask him with a cheery smile; and his eyes light, he shakes his head that no, there certainly can't. 'If you're good,' I tell him then, and half-tip the bottle in his mug. And I pour a tumbler for meself, and sit down by him at the table. He's ever such good company, is dear little Toby; so, we drink our gin together some mornings. I've got a bit of a fondness for gin, I have.


End file.
